What is happening?
Earlier this year Adult Social Services asked the public for their views on the proposed changes to the way we charge for services. The report has now gone to the Council's Cabinet for them to decide whether to go ahead with the changes.
Below is a summary of the proposed changes and the reasons why.
Why do we need to make changes to changes for services?
The number of people who need support from Social Services is increasing. This means that each year it costs more money for Social Services to support people. To help pay for these services, the Government allows councils to ask people to pay some of their own money towards the cost of their support.
To make sure that what a council charges for services is fair, we have to carry out a “financial assessment”. This means that we work out how much a person can afford to pay. To do this, the council looks at:
How much money a person gets each week
How much the cost of the Social Services suport would be
No-one should be asked to pay an amount that they cannot afford.
Darlington Council needs to change the way that people pay for services to make sure that everyone that gets support from Social Services are treated the same. The same rules should apply for older people, disabled people or those with mental health needs.
The Council wants to change the rules about what people have to pay for their support, so that it is fair for everyone. The amount of money that people are charged for services may not be enough to cover the cost of that service, so the price may need to go up.
What are the proposed changes?
The council also wants to increase some charges, because the cost of services has risen.
The hourly rate for Home Care is £9.08 at the moment. The council wants to increase this to £10.61 an hour for good quality services, with a higher amount of £10.75 for services from the top quality providers. Specialist Home Care would cost £11.10 an hour.
Meals at Day Services would cost £3.42 a day, which is the full cost.
Frozen meals supplied to people at home would cost £3.00 per day, which is the full cost.
The council also wants to bring in some new charges:
A charge of £10 per day to attend day services, this would be part of the financial assessment to see how much someone would pay towards the service. This is about ¼ of the actual cost to the council.
A charge of £1.00 each way for transport between home and services. This is proposed as a standard charge to all users of transport and would not be part of the financial assessment.
Some examples of how things are unfair now
People with a learning disability do not pay towards some of the services they use, such as Home Care
People who live in Extra Care Housing do not pay towards the full cost of their services
People who have day care only pay towards the cost of the refreshments and do not pay towards the full cost of the day care
People are not charged for transport to services, even though they may also have a car or receive Disability Living Allowance to help them get about
People who have frozen meals delivered to their home are not charged as much as people who have frozen meals but who live in Extra Care Housing
People who choose to have a direct payment instead of day care are financially assessed and have to pay towards the cost of their support
Return to News page